After long absence from a Spring day in the deep South, I’m contemplating memory vs. experience. In Atlanta, Spring arrives with some displeasure. Obviously it is a gorgeous display of dogwood and the re-greening of a well treed city; but it comes with pollen and sinus infections and Elmer Fudd-like mating rituals. How to show off a pedicure and sandals while also blowing your nose with blood shot eyes? These are arts that escaped me, but I did love the bloom time and the long pause before the brutal heat and gritty sweat of Summer.
But here at the cat’s farm, Spring’s best performance by far is in the pecan trees. Pecan trees, for those of you who don’t know, have a great spread, much like the live oak, but with thinner limbs and lighter-toned leaves. (Pecan trees also don’t litter all year long.) And in the Spring, the color is almost lime. Protoverus is a made up word that may embody the green that they are. A first truth. (Primavera is too easy on the ears and already around.) The visual impact of an entire groove is stunning.
Back to memory vs. experience. Naturally, I always looked forward to these few weeks of intense green. And yet, 2005 being the last Southern Spring I witnessed, I’d forgotten how much this simple repetitive hue embodied the season for me. And now I’m here again in the midst of it, for the wrong reasons (or maybe the right ones) and I have to just say, thank you.
Dad is doing fine now. My biggest wish is this will be my family’s re-awakening of what makes us happy and what we have to do to obtain that.
And while I’m wishing, my rock (even a very distant rock) and my dear friend Michelle is getting a year older today. Happy birthday love and thank you for all of the wisdom your youth has afforded you. We all greatly benefit from your mind and heart. No matter how rough the water, you hold fast. Thanks for everything.
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